Cantabs walking down King’s Parade yesterday might have been bemused to see an enormous billboard displaying the stylised features of Adolf Hitler and calling upon German broadcaster Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) to apologise.

It is in fact a protest by a group of Polish activists against language in Western media which they feel unfairly blames Poles for the atrocities committed in their country by Nazi Germany.

The billboard shows a pale grey photo of the infamous rail entrance to the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, with a depiction of Adolf Hitler’s moustache and hair emblazoned over the top in black.

Its caption, “Death camps were Nazi German - ZDF apologise!”, is a reference to a controversy which engulfed the German outlet after it broadcast references to Polish involvement in the notorious death camps in a promotion for a documentary. Last month, a Polish court ordered ZDF to apologise to a survivor of Auschwitz for the material.

The billboard has been on a 1000-mile journey from Wroclaw, Poland, through Germany and Belgium, finally ending its trip in Cambridge. It is being towed by a group of Polish activists from the city of Wroclaw, in the south of Poland, to the UK. Cambridge was its final destination.

The billboard protest is run by the Foundation for the Traditions of Town and Country, a Poland NGO. David Hallman, a member of the organisation said, “The idea of our campaign is simple. We demand the historical truth, we oppose the use of the term ‘Polish concentration camps’, which is commonly used by Western media.”